Blu-ray Release: Escape From Zahrain

Blu-ray Release Date: Sept. 17, 2013
Price: Blu-ray $24.95
Studio: Olive Films


Escape from Zahrain movie scene

Yul Brynner (l.) and Jack Warden (ctr.) mean business in Escape from Zahrain.

The punchy 1962 action-adventure movie Escape From Zahrain stars Yul Brynner (The Ten Commandments) as a charismatic rebel leader fighting local corruption and foreign exploitation in a fictitious, oil-rich Arab sheikdom.

While this might sound like it’s “ripped from today’s headlines,” the tragic difference is that in 1962, Arab rebels were fighting for modernity, not fundamentalism!

Produced and directed by Ronald Neame (The Poseidon Adventure) and co-starring Sal Mineo (Rebel Without a Cause), Madlyn Rhue (He Rides Tall), Jack Warden (…And Justice for All) and James Mason (Bigger Than Life), Escape From Zahrain is brashly colorful on a very low budget — the flip-side to that same year’s Lawrence of Arabia, if you will. Clothes never get dirty on an arduous, miles-long trek (detergent costs!), and the desert locales could be a foreign planet from a science-fiction film that just wrapped, but, hey, that’s part of the fun.

Like the DVD edition that Olive Films issued a couple of years back, the Blu-ray contains no bonus features.

 

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About Laurence

Founder and editor Laurence Lerman saw Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest when he was 13 years old and that’s all it took. He has been writing about film and video for more than a quarter of a century for magazines, anthologies, websites and most recently, Video Business magazine, where he served as the Reviews Editor for 15 years.